Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Crochet Ye Roses While Ye May

I knit to create clothing, but the thing I admire about crochet is the variety of pure embellishment you can produce. I especially enjoy crochet floral motifs, like this cabbage rose, a standard feature in Irish crochet. I wanted to make some Irish crochet-style leaves to go with it, but I couldn't find a pattern in my collection.

Suzanne Thompson's Curious and Crafty Readers blog came to my rescue, with her Corrugated Leaf Tutorial. It was exactly the way to make the leaves I knew from my grandma's collection of doilies and do-dads. Poking around on Suzanne's blog, I found lots of wonderful crochet flower designs and directions. Some of them are the usual fanciful geometric shapes, but many have details that make them look like real, specific flowers--pansies, poppies, daffodils, primroses. And the leaves--ferns, palms, pine boughs. It's too cool.

She has some of these in a book: Crochet Bouquet: Easy Designs for Dozens of Flowers. It's so moderately priced at Amazon that I put it right on my wishlist. Suzanne's blog even gives you instructions for converting your copy to spiral-bound format.

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